Io! Io!

(Jean François de Troy – Pan & Syrinx)

Hope this finds you well. Spring is upon us, and with that, my thoughts run to the nature of it all. The buds are on the the trees, the weather is wild and beautiful and I can feel the ancient quickening in my heart and limbs.

This edition is all things PAN, and it easily could of been many times longer. Perhaps another one soon.

“Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward man be at one. May I reckon the wise to be the wealthy, and may I have such a quantity of gold as none but the temperate can carry.” – Phaedrus
~~
“What was he doing, the great god Pan, / Down in the reeds by the river? / Spreading ruin and scattering ban, / Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, / And breaking the golden lilies afloat / With the dragon-fly on the river.” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
~~
“All in a moment Hurlow forgot the beauty of the sounds and smelt fear. He smelt it as an animal smells it, the breath cold in his nostrils. He had read about Pan, a dead god who might safely be patronized while poring over a book in a London lodging, but here and at this hour a god not to be scorned. (“Furze Hollow”)”
― A.M. Burrage
~~
And that dismal cry rose slowly
And sank slowly through the air,
Full of spirit’s melancholy
And eternity’s despair!
And they heart the words it said–
Pan is dead! great Pan is dead!
Pan, Pan is dead!
– Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Dead Pan
~~~~~~Homage To Pan

Thrill with lissome lust of the light,
O man! My man!
Come careering out of the night
Of Pan! Io Pan!
Io Pan! Io Pan! Come over the sea
From Sicily and from Arcady!
Roaming as Bacchus, with fauns and pards
And nymphs and satyrs for thy guards,
On a milk-white ass, come over the sea
To me, to me,
Come with Apollo in bridal dress
(Shepherdess and pythoness)
Come with Artemis, silken shod,
And wash thy white thigh, beautiful God,
In the moon of the woods, on the marble mount,
The dimpled dawn of the amber fount!
Dip the purple of passionate prayer
In the crimson shrine, the scarlet snare,
The soul that startles in eyes of blue
To watch thy wantonness weeping through
The tangled grove, the gnarled bole
Of the living tree that is spirit and soul
And body and brain — come over the sea,
(Io Pan! Io Pan!)
Devil or god, to me, to me,
My man! my man!
Come with trumpets sounding shrill
Over the hill!
Come with drums low muttering
From the spring!
Come with flute and come with pipe!
Am I not ripe?
I, who wait and writhe and wrestle
With air that hath no boughs to nestle
My body, weary of empty clasp,
Strong as a lion and sharp as an asp —
Come, O come!
I am numb
With the lonely lust of devildom.
Thrust the sword through the galling fetter,
All-devourer, all-begetter;
Give me the sign of the Open Eye,
And the token erect of thorny thigh,
And the word of madness and mystery,
O Pan! Io Pan!
Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan Pan! Pan,
I am a man:
Do as thou wilt, as a great god can,
O Pan! Io Pan!
Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! I am awake
In the grip of the snake.
The eagle slashes with beak and claw;
The gods withdraw:
The great beasts come, Io Pan! I am borne
To death on the horn
Of the Unicorn.
I am Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan!
I am thy mate, I am thy man,
Goat of thy flock, I am gold, I am god,
Flesh to thy bone, flower to thy rod.
With hoofs of steel I race on the rocks
Through solstice stubborn to equinox.
And I rave; and I rape and I rip and I rend
Everlasting, world without end,
Mannikin, maiden, Maenad, man,
In the might of Pan.
Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan! Io Pan!
~~
Pan, Echo, and the Satyr
by: Moschus (fl. 150 B.C.)
translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Pan loved his neighbour Echo–but that child
Of Earth and Air pined for the Satyr leaping;
The Satyr loved with wasting madness wild
The bright nymph Lyda–and so three went weeping.
As Pan loved Echo, Echo loved the Satyr,
The Satyr Lyda–and so love consumed them.–
And thus to each–which was a woeful matter–
To bear what they inflicted Justice doomed them;
For in as much as each might hate the lover,
Each loving, so was hated.–Ye that love not
Be warned–in thought turn this example over,
That when ye love–the like return ye prove not.
~~
Pan and the Cherries
by: Paul Fort (1872-1960)
translated by Jethro Bithell

I recognized him by his skips and hops,
And by his hair I knew that he was Pan.
Through sunny avenues he ran,
And leapt for cherries to the red tree-tops.
Upon his fleece were pearling water drops
Like little silver stars. How pure he was!

And this was when my spring was arched with blue.

Now, seeing a cherry of a smoother gloss,
He seized it, and bit the kernel from the pulp.
I watched him with great joy … I came anigh …
He spat the kernel straight into my eye.
I ran to kill Pan with my knife!
He stretched his arm out, swirled–
And the whole earth whirled!

This wooden cup, black as an apple pip,
Where I with hard insinuating knife
Have carved a vine-leaf curling to its tip
With node and fold and tendril true to life,

I yield it up to Pan in memory
Of that day when the shepherd Damis rushed
Upon me, snatched it, and drank after me,
Laughing when at his impudence I blushed.

Not knowing where the horned god’s altar is,
I leave my offering in the rock’s cleft here.
–But now my heart is burning for a kiss
More deep, and longer clinging, and more near . . .
~~
Pan with Us
by: Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Pan came out of the woods one day,–
His skin and his hair and his eyes were gray,
The gray of the moss of walls were they,–
And stood in the sun and looked his fill
At wooded valley and wooded hill.
He stood in the zephyr, pipes in hand,
On a height of naked pasture land;
In all the country he did command
He saw no smoke and he saw no roof.
That was well! and he stamped a hoof.
His heart knew peace, for none came here
To this lean feeding save once a year
Someone to salt the half-wild steer,
Or homespun children with clicking pails
Who see no little they tell no tales.
He tossed his pipes, too hard to teach
A new-world song, far out of reach,
For a sylvan sign that the blue jay’s screech
And the whimper of hawks beside the sun
Were music enough for him, for one.
Times were changed from what they were:
Such pipes kept less of power to stir
The fruited bough of the juniper
And the fragile bluets clustered there
Than the merest aimless breath of air.
They were pipes of pagan mirth,
And the world had found new terms of worth.
He laid him down on the sun-burned earth
And ravelled a flower and looked away–
Play? Play?–What should he play?
~~
The Old Shepherd
Macedonius: 6th century A.D.

Daphnis, I that piped so rarely,
I that guarded well the fold,
‘Tis my trembling hand that fails me;
I am weary, I am old.
Here my well-worn crook I offer
unto Pan the shepherd’s friend;
Know ye, I am old and weary;
of my toil I make an end!
Yet I still can pipe it rarely,
still my voice is clear and strong;
Very tremulous in body,
nothing tremulous in song.
Only let no envious goatherd
tell the wolves upon the hill
That my ancient strength is wasted,
lest they do me grievous ill.
~~~~~~

The Tomb Of Pan
Lord Dunsany

“Seeing,” they said, “that old-time Pan is dead, let us now make a tomb for him and a monument, that the dreadful worship of long ago may be remembered and avoided by all.”

So said the people of the enlightened lands. And they built a white and mighty tomb of marble. Slowly it rose under the hands of the builders and longer every evening after sunset it gleamed with rays of the departed sun.

And many mourned for Pan while the builders built; many reviled him. Some called the builders to cease and to weep for Pan and others called them to leave no memorial at all of so infamous a god. But the builders built on steadily.

And one day all was finished, and the tomb stood there like a steep sea-cliff. And Pan was carved thereon with humbled head and the feet of angels pressed upon his neck. And when the tomb was finished the sun had already set, but the afterglow was rosy on the huge bulk of Pan.

And presently all the enlightened people came, and saw the tomb and remembered Pan who was dead, and all deplored him and his wicked age. But a few wept apart because of the death of Pan.

But at evening as he stole out of the forest, and slipped like a shadow softly along the hills, Pan saw the tomb and laughed.
~~~~~~The Waterboys – The Return of Pan